A Forgotten Dream
by Bounce
Summary: Xavier mourns Magneto and remembers the love they once shared.


A Forgotten Dream. Rated PG. [Xavier/Magneto]  
  
By Bounce.  
  
Disclaimer: Don't own 'em. Don't want to. Don't sue.  
  
Thanks to Andraste for beta-ing this several times. I really appreciate it. You should all go and thank her now. This thing would be barely readable without her.  
  
People think that telepathy is a great gift. That it makes communicating easier, because you don't need the words anymore.  
  
They are wrong. You still have the words. They are still there and they still get in way. You can see the lies that people tell all the time, that allow them to function together.  
  
You know what they really mean, and yet you can also hear what they say.  
  
You hear the 'why' and the 'how' and the 'what' that are behind their anger. Yet it still hurts, despite knowing all of that.  
  
There is never any silence in your mind. Do you know how terrible it is to know a person's deepest fears, and their dreams and desires and hates?  
  
It should make the words hurt less, the knowing, the understanding. It makes them hurt more.  
  
I've laughed at that, because otherwise I'd cry.  
  
I shivered in the icy wind. I looked down at my hands, folded in my lap, before glancing back at the way I'd come. The tracks from the wheels on my chair showed clearly against the frost.  
  
Sometimes I feel that there is a huge insurmountable gap between myself and other people. A chasm caused by the twist of genetics that gave me this ability. By the fear on their faces when I say the wrong thing, expose the fact that I see much more than I should.  
  
Even so, there are still some people I have shared a connection with.  
  
They were both so frighteningly intelligent. We had so many dreams, about mutants and even of one day making this world into a utopia. Moira always did try to understand what it must be like for a mutant; the fear and hatred that follows anything that is essential alien, different. Especially after Kevin was born. It was what led her to follow my Dream. To try so hard to make it a reality when it seemed as though nothing could be less likely than that. Erik tried to follow the Dream. But he was too badly hurt, too badly scarred by his own childhood to ever fully appreciate it.  
  
She had wanted to help Kevin and mutants so much. And yet, when it came right down to it, Moira never told me about him. If she had, I might have been able to help the poor child. Been able to stop things before they got so bad. Before group of children had to kill him.  
  
I hurt Erik so badly. I never did forgive myself for it. I tried to say that I had to, that I had had no other choice. I knew though, that it was a lie. I was furious with him. He stole one of my students. Peter. He interrupted the funeral of a small girl. That angered me far more than all of the rest. Illyana had been Erik's student. He should have had more respect, for me and for her memory, than that.  
  
So I hurt him. I hut him so badly that neither of us ever recovered from it.  
  
Moira grew apart from me over the years. In the end, all we shared was a dying Dream. She loved Sean. I. I had an echoing mansion and an ever changing group of students and X-Men. A growing list of people who had died because of me. Erik, Erik had his own plans, his own course. Eventually he had Genosha. His mutant homeland.  
  
I stared out across the lawn, towards the woods at the far side of the grounds. I refused to look behind me, at the cemetery. The half a dozen graves that had been placed there in the last few years. At the memorials for Erik, for Moira. Erik lies in a forgotten grave, in the ruins of a destroyed country. Here at least there is a memorial, a memory of the man he once was. A stone plaque. Almost overgrown with weeds, and half covered in fallen leaves.  
  
I turned away, looking towards the mansion. I can almost pretend that the wind caused my tears as it blew past me.  
  
Erik and I had stayed up almost till dawn. Talking. We had talked so much. We argued too. Incessantly, about anything and everything under the sun. Until, eventually we had known every aspect of each other. He never laughed much, rarely even smiled. Except for me.  
  
We had spent the night discussing philosophy, and religion, and the place mutants would one day have in the world. It always turned to that. Who could blame us? We both knew that mutants would bring about the biggest change that our world had ever known. In those days Erik had dreamed my Dream, of peace between humans and mutants. It had seemed so simple then. We had truly believed that we could bring about a paradise, a world where mutant children would not be feared for what they were, the danger they represented. We were so young, and we had such high hopes.  
  
Erik had laughed and said, "I cannot imagine life without you Charles. I cannot ever imagine finding a friend like you again." I had been shocked. Eric always kept his deepest feelings close to his chest, afraid to let them out.  
  
I had looked at him for a long moment, staring deep into his eyes. I allowed a brief smile to cross my lips. "And I don't believe that I will ever find a friend like you again either".  
  
I never did find anyone like Erik again. Never found a mind quite like his, full of such depths and such incredible beauty.  
  
There were so many times when I wanted nothing more than to tell Erik that I was a mutant. But even then, even with him, the fear of other's reactions was too strong. As much as I trusted Erik, I still could not bring myself to tell him that. Could not bring myself to tell anyone that.  
  
Times when I wanted nothing more than to ask his permission to enter his mind and to share my mind with him, a joining far and away more intimate than any we could ever have achieved from mere physical contact.  
  
Maybe, if I'd said something sooner, he never would have become Magneto. How many lives might I have saved if I hadn't been so afraid of his reaction? If I'd told him?  
  
I felt more alive when I was with him. We had a connection that I was never able to achieve with Moira. Truthfully, as much as I loved her, I didn't want that same depth of feeling. The sort of trust that only comes when you let another person see deepest depths of your soul and know that they will allow you the same privilege. I loved him.  
  
I looked at the mansion's grounds. For a moment the school was replaced by a mountain of rubble. It was a sight I had seen too many times over the years. As always the thought hurt. The thought that maybe, next time, we wouldn't be so lucky. That my students, my X-men, would die the next time the mansion was destroyed.  
  
I remembered the times that we had shared together. Erik and I had laughed, and talked and shared so much, though never that one key piece of information. The fact that we were both mutants.  
  
Even after, when we were fighting against each other, we never forgot what we had shared. We never forgot being young and foolish and staying up until dawn, talking and arguing.  
  
I rested my hands on the wheels of my chair. The metal was cold to the touch, almost painfully so. It was so tempting to turn away, return to the mansion as I had done so many other times. To ignore the neglected marker behind me. The memorial I had never seen.  
  
I spent so many years fighting against you Erik. Pretending that it negated everything we had once shared, that the dreams of two foolish, idealistic men meant nothing.  
  
That all that counted was a sunken submarine in the Pacific Ocean, a base in Antarctica, a broken space station and a stolen student. The attempts to bring a twisted, crippled version of my Dream to fruition. A terrible crime on my part, leaving you crippled and destroyed.  
  
I spent so many years pretending that that was all that counted. That our time together meant nothing. Yet, I still asked for a memorial to be placed in the small cemetery on the far side of the grounds. I said it was because you had been a noble man. After all, you had tried to change. You even taught my New Mutants for a time.  
  
I pushed against the wheels, and turned the chair. And I saw the overgrown stone plaque, set into the ground. Somehow, I had thought that it would be larger.  
  
This time I didn't bother trying to pretend that the tears running down my cheeks were caused by the cold wind. 


End file.
